The nautical anchor was in place in time for the five o'clock news that very day. And it hadn't cost a thin dime. Dave Sinnott had bartered advertising time for the thing, which required four strong backs to carry it into the building.
The news anchor took one look at it and refused to go on the air.
"Are you kidding?" Floyd said tearfully. "This will ruin my career."
"Boy, your career's done. You just don't know it yet. Now you get your raggedy ass planted in that chair and you read."
Floyd Cumptsy cut his copy of the Atlanta Constitution more slowly that day, like a man who had come to the end of his string.
Half way through the broadcast, the anchor fell to the floor with a resounding crash. The other anchor-the one who was reading-kept on reading, his face turning red and his heart sinking along with his future.
Then the calls started coming in.
"Put up that damn anchor."
"Are you just going to let it sit there?"
"It's the best darn part of the show."
Dave Sinnott knew public interest when he saw it. Not bothering to wait for the commercial break, he walked onto camera range and personally hoisted the anchor into place. It immediately fell, breaking his foot in two places.
He hopped off the screen, venting choice curses.
The switchboard was flooded with more calls. Taxis began dropping off excited viewers, offering to put the anchor up themselves. Fistfights broke out over the privilege.
The first three who offered got the job. As the seated anchor droned on and on, slowly sinking into his chair, three Georgia Tech boys got the other anchor up and banged it into place, all but drowning out the weather with their hammering.
The next day, offers to syndicate WETT News poured in.
"How many buyers we got?" Jed Burner demanded over the cellular phone hookup when he got the word.
"Thirty," Sinnott said proudly, "and they're still coming in."
"What's the best of the lot?"
"Two thousand."
"Two thousand? Some prime jerk wants to buy mah whole station foah a measly two thousand dollahs?"
"They don't want to buy the station. They want to buy broadcast rights to WETT News."
"Explain it so a lil' ole sailor boy can get the nut of it, will you, son?"
"We have over thirty cable stations vying for the right to rebroadcast WETT News. The best offer is two thousand dollars. Per episode. Seven days a week is fourteen thousand dollars, times fifty-two weeks is-"
Jed Burner interrupted with a question. "What's cable?"
"It's TV that is carried on wires. They gotta hook it up special. They also call it pay TV."
"How come?"
"People pay for it."
"You joshin' me, son. TV's free. It's like oxygen. You buy a set and plug 'er in and you're set for life. Except for the commercials. Think we can get better ratin's if we cut out those dang commercials?"
"Mr. Burner, if we had more commercials we'd be in the black."
"Tell me some more about this cable thing," Jed Burner said slowly.
Station manager Dave Sinnott patiently explained cable. He tried to keep it simple. He knew his boss had the approximate attention span of a gnat.
"Never work in a million years," Jed Burner said at the end of it.
"It's not doing so bad now. These cable outfits are hungry for product. And they'll throw just about anything on the air. That's why our news looks so good to them. It's different."
"All them wires. Ridiculous. But back to this heah rebroadcast rights thing, are these good offers?"
"Depends on what you compare them to."
"Try comparin' them. Just to humor a poor cracker."
"Well, compared to a locally produced show with its budget, these are right handsome offers," Sinnott admitted.
"Ah hear a 'but' in your voice, boy."
"Compared to what network affiliates pay for the big news shows produced up North, it ain't cowflop."
Interest flavored Jed Burner's cornpone voice. "By what kinda margin?"
Sinnott floated some figures and the silence on the line was prolonged. The rush of ocean water past a fiberglass hull was indistinguishable from static in his ear.
He was about to ask if his boss had fallen overboard when Jed Burner's voice came back on the line. Gone was the loud, obnoxious attitude which, combined with his brash personality, had caused the print press to dub him "Captain Audacious."
"You listen here. Forget all that rebroadcast stuff. Ah want you to take that there dinky news show we got and you build it up. Heah? Built it up so that it's bigger and better than the Northern shows. With me so far?"
"Yes." The station manager's voice was a froggy croak.
"Then you offer it around. But you undercut them network scuts. You undercut 'em good. Ah want WETT News carried on every station in the cottonpickin' country."
"Impossible!"
"Ain't nothin' impossible. What's it gonna take?"
"Money. Millions."
"Okay, you got the millions. Ah got a few shekels jinglin' in mah jeans. Mah daddy made himself a fair pile afore he passed on, even if he did kinda let this station thing go to pot. Anythin' else you'll be needin'?"
"Yes," Sinnott said, crossing his fingers, "a bigger anchor."
"Son, you got not one, but two anchors. Moolah's no object. Just make sure it's nailed down real good this time."
"That's not the kind of anchor I meant."
"What other kind is there?"
"The news reader. They call them anchors, too."
"Then we already got two anchors. Am Ah right?"
"We need a bigger one."
"Which should be bigger?"
Sinnott thought fast. "Both. Especially the talking one."
"Guy looks pretty hefty to me."
"Ah meant a bigger name. One more recognizable. One of the network anchors."
"Who's good, but cheap?"
"Don Cooder."
Then Jed Burner blurted out the question that was subsequently reported in Time, Newsweek, TV Guide, the New York Times-the question that would haunt him in the months and years to come.
"Who the hell is Don Coodah?"
At first, it was seen as a colossal joke. The brash entrepreneur who ran a station no one wanted, trying to launch a national newscast based on a spoof of the news.
It would never have gotten off the ground had the station manager not understood that he had hit the bottom of his television career. It was make WETT News work or manage a Burger Triumph. If Dave Sinnott could find one that would take him on.
It was 1980, and the booming cable TV industry, barely a decade old, was facing its first challenge: Satellite TV.
Dishes were already beginning to appear in backyards and hotel lawns and bar roofs in anticipation of the next boom in broadcasting.
Meanwhile, broadcast TV, reeling from the challenge of cable, fought back on every front. The first casualty was their own anchor system. Virtually overnight, the old guard of anchors, seasoned professionals, many of whom learned their craft on radio, were unceremoniously canned.
And a crop of young manicured and tonsured celebrity anchors were brought in to replace them. Thus, the cult of the anchor was born.
Overnight, the cream of television broadcast journalism was on the street.
WETT News had its pick. So Dave Sinnott hired two of the best of the dispossessed anchors.
They weren't flashy. They weren't backed up by computer graphics or identifying Chyrons, But they could read copy off a teleprompter and switch to script without skipping a syllable.
Virtually overnight, WETT News was respectable.
"We have to change our name," Dave Sinnott, now doubling as uncredited news director, said one day. "Folks are still laughing."
"Is that bad?" Jed Burner asked via transatlantic telephone.
"Very bad. We have to be serious now. An image change would help."
"Okay-but we gotta keep the word News in there. How about Kable News-KN?"